Friday, July 19, 2013

Peace

Peace occurs in elusive moments
of living relations, like specks of gold that appear after long periods of
panning and sifting.As in gold mining,
the harder we try to accumulate peace, the more waste, destruction and human
suffering we create in the process.As
one who has invested a great deal of personal human capital in trying to make
peace, I find this a particularly hard reality to accept; ultimately, this
reality makes it hard for me to live with myself.In the face of human problems in my own daily
relations, let alone in the face of demands to stop violence on larger human
scales, I confront my own impotence.I have
heavily invested my ego in making peace happen, though experience keeps trying
to show me that the moments of peace I encounter are instead those I let
happen.

A case in point happened during
a demonstration of mediation between guards and prisoners that I facilitated
last December at Santa Rosa prison in Trinidad.When the demonstration ended, a magistrate and experienced mediator seated
behind me asked, “Did you notice what Prof. Pepinsky did [to make the
demonstration work well]?”She pointed
out how much I had kept quiet and let other participants do the talking.I was too flattered to let onto what kept me
so quiet.A combination of loud air
conditioning, my failing hearing, and my unfamiliarity with Trinidadian spoken
English meant that I relied more on body language and tone than on content of
what was said.Plainly put, I didn’t
understand much of what people were saying, and so I left others’
interpretations of what was being said alone.My ignorance proved to be my most salient asset.

What applies to helping resolve
other people’s differences applies to helping me resolve my own internal
conflicts.I have just returned from a
visit to Poland with my wife, daughter and granddaughter for a rather large and
wonderful family reunion led by my father-in-law, who moved to his present home
in Montreal in 1965, and had not been back to his homeland for more than 40
years.The time was properly theirs to
plan and journey through, mine to observe.I took many pictures and did a lot of listening and watching, while in
past visits alone or with my wife and daughter, I had been an active
participant.I had become all the more
effusive when I downed Polish vodka with enthusiasm, while this was my first
sober visit.I also spent time with
colleagues of mine and Jill’s.A natural
question on getting back together was, “What are you doing?”I had recently confronted some resistance and
resentment in two organizations I have joined—the local folk music society and
my neighborhood organization, and was learning to back off and be in both
groups without “doing” anything much worth talking about.So when a couple of dear kinfolk with whom I
have spent many good visits asked why I seemed so sad, I found I had little to
say in my defense, and felt guilty that I was making them feel bad besides being
uninteresting.

I also returned to outrage among
friends, colleagues, and commentators I respect over George Zimmerman’s
acquittal from the charge of murdering Trayvon Martin, and the attendant desire
to see Zimmerman prosecuted by the US Justice Department for violating Martin’s
civil rights.My blogging ego wanted to
contribute something constructive to the discussion, and yet I could not deny
to myself that I felt critical of taking the anger and frustration I feel over
the racism the incident represents on one criminal defendant.An inner voice reminded me of what students
used to tell me:Hal, you’re always so
critical; what do you propose instead?All in all, personally and professionally, I came home feeling pretty
inadequate, pretty useless as a fellow human being.

My spirits were briefly lifted
on my first walk back home at dawn through my heavily wooded neighborhood, even
though it was abnormally still.I met no
deer.A single blue jay called out from
a distance, but otherwise no cardinals chirped, no birds flew across my
path.As that day and the day after wore
on, I returned to my existential funk and confusion…that is, until I went out
of the closed, air-conditioned house with a cup of coffee to sit on the
patio.The fish were busy feeding on the
water hyacinth roots and the algae on the walls of the pool.I had one leg crossed over the other.A fly landed on my upraised great
toenail.She and I gazed at each
other.We both rested quite still except
that she gently rubbed her front legs together as though cleaning them
off.And as I looked up, one bird after
another flew near and began to sing; a pair flitted round each other just over
my head.And I began to feel reconnected
with my living relations.

Last night I fell asleep
early.In place of an unusual string of
nightmares I had been having, I had a dream that was merely interesting.I awoke refreshed.As I took my warning walk, I passed a young
cardinal (perhaps one of those born in my yard), then came upon a doe standing
in the middle of the road.As I walked
toward her, she skipped across the road onto a school playground, then walked
back toward me as I drew nigh.I said a
soft hello as I passed, and as I nodded toward her she dipped her head in
return.By the time I returned home,
showered and had breakfast, all my anxiety over this or that future event or
possible problem had dissipated, and I felt free to write this essay.

In this moment I can separate my
appreciation of the nugget of shared awareness that connects masses of people
across racial lines in recognizing that no stranger one encounters on the
street merits profiling by race, age or gender, as was apparent for Trayvon
Martin as it is apparent from police stops to incarceration.Were it not for our culture of profiling, Mr.
Martin would have returned home alive and well.I separate that appreciation from my refusal to extend that recognition
to condemnation of George Zimmerman to further punishment.I have little enough faith in the capacity of
human juries and judges to pass judgment and impose sentence on defendants in any
case, which is why I have chosen back home in retirement not to register to
vote and hence become obliged to do jury service.In the Zimmerman-Martin case, I am further
taken aback that based on faraway news accounts alone, people are prepared to “demand”
that Mr. Zimmerman be prosecuted to the so-called full extent of the law and
locked away accordingly.That is the
mindset that underlies lynching.And for
those who think that Zimmerman’s suffering somehow makes up for the loss of Mr.
Martin and his nearest and dearest, I would point out that Zimmerman has not
gotten off scot-free.His legal debt has
to exceed six figures.He has been
confined and can scarcely go out in public without fear of being recognized and
vilified. It is always a moot point whether punishment raises offenders’
awareness of their own responsibility for harm done even if convicted and
sentenced, or instead only deepens the anger and fear that may have led them to
offend in the first place.If public
condemnation has that effect, Mr. Zimmerman’s conscience is no less troubled
for his formal acquittal (which the law makes clear is not the same as being
certified innocent).Nor would repeal of
stand-your-ground laws stop racialized violence in the long run any more than court
orders have stopped separate and unequal schooling across lines of class and
color, which now takes the former of high stakes testing and public funding of
elite charter schools and closing of neighborhood public schools not only in
the South, but foremost in Chicago, the home of the nation’s first black
president, with his implicit blessing.In a larger sense, today, racism has progressed from national and
colonial to globalized, privatized levels across hardening boundaries from the
Rio Grande to Southern Europe and across the former Soviet Union.Nuggets of connection, of compassion that
cuts through violent divisions pan out.They are precious.My enjoyment
of those precious moments sustains me, despite the prospect that for countless
generations beyond my lifetime, they will continue to be outweighed by the
violence and destruction in which they appear.Love and peace--hal

About Me

I retired Jan. 2009 from after 33 years on the criminal justice faculty at Indiana University, Bloomington. I continue not to charge for any form of public service, including speaking and consulting, and now have plenty of free time to do so on request. I do not do social networking. I regularly monitor just one email account: pepinsky@indiana.edu; my home phone number is 1-614-885-6341; my skype name is halpep. My papers and such are archived at http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/findingaids/view?brand=general&docId=InU-Ar-VAA9639.xml&doc.view=entire_text.
I am known as a co-founder of "peacemaking criminology." Page proofs of my latest, 2006 U of Ottawa Press book, Peacemaking: Reflections of a Radical Criminologist, are freely available at http://critcrim.org/sites/default/files/Pepinsky_proofs_0.pdf , the end of which lists my publications, nine books and over 80 articles and chapters in all, on a wide range of subjects from the international to the interpersonal level. My preceding book, A Criminologist's Quest for Peace, is also freely available at http://critcrim.org/pepinsky, and a pdf of Myths That Cause Crime is on the critcrim.org home page.